The first are paradisiacal, the last are tragic.
Nevertheless, whatever may be the contrast, all these toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest to the most foolish, possess one likeness, and this is it:
disinterestedness.
Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of themselves.
They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute.
The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he may be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite.
Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign--the starry eye.
The shadowy eye is the other sign.
With it, evil commences.
Reflect and tremble in the presence of any one who has no glance at all.
The social order has its black miners.
There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where light becomes extinct.
Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all these galleries, below this whole immense, subterranean, venous system of progress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower than Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection with the upper levels, there lies the last mine. A formidable spot.